Open Collections

Abstract

In West Point Grey, speculation-driven property management logics produce hidden oases of liberated domesticity within investor-owned single-family homes. Neglecting their present material integrity in favour of their future redevelopment value, finance capitalism reproduces these ‘Sharehouses’ as potent vessels for novel social organization, architectural appropriation, and collective love. Room Only documents and reconstructs the social, political, material and spatial characteristics of four local Sharehouses, drawing from the lived experience of current and past tenants. Ritual practices and spatial appropriations are extrapolated toward an interconnected domestic landscape in which radical redistribution of material, people and program enacts the full liberatory potential of the typology. Part love letter, part manifesto, this project celebrates the beauty and resilience of Sharehouse communities to challenge dominant domestic ideology and conventional housing solutions.